Googly eyes picture frame.

I saw an awesome idea on this blog for making a picture frame covered in googly eyes, so I made my own.  I got a picture frame at Goodwill (for a whopping 50 cents) a long time ago with the thought that I would alter it someday, so I dug that out of my cabinets and got to work.  I remembered to take a before photo after I had started painting already, but you can see a bit of what it looked like before here:

I painted it black with cheap acrylic paint from Hobby Lobby.  Then I just covered the frame bit by bit with Mod Podge and google eyes (from Dollar Tree for a buck).  I love that they’re all different sizes.  I got 4 bags because I wasnn’t sure how many it would take, but I only used 3.

Here’s my finished project!

What do you think?  Isn’t it CUTE?

Mummy candy bar Halloween treat

What do you get when you take this…..

(package of gauze from the dollar store)

AND put it with this?

You get THIS:

I wish I could afford to buy 30 full size Hershey bars, I would totally make these for Summer’s class Halloween party…but geesh candy bars ain’t cheap nowadays!  ha ha

Isn’t he cute?

I’m sharing him here:

 Free Pretty Things For You

Prima Pumpkins!

Well, pumpking carving time has arrived, but I don’t like the disgusting task of carving a pumpking…..so I decided to make bedazzled pumpkins instead! 

I bought 3 mini pumpkins at the grocery store and used my Prima brand (Say It With Crystals) self-adhesive jeweled flourishes to pretty them up.  Very simple.  I just stuck them on starting at the stem (I wanted to curl one end around the stems) and smoothed them down onto the pumpkin until I reached the end.  

(click any photo to see larger)

(I used this American Crafts ribbon from my shop)

Aren’t they purty punkins?

They’re featured today over at the Practical Scrappers blog with some other awesome altered Halloween projects.  Click here to go see the other cool stuff!

I’m gonna share this at these awesome sites:

Skip to my Lou

 Craftomaniac

 Night Owl Crafting

 Blue Cricket Design

Skip to My Lou

Art Binder.

So my 11-year-old daughter is an artist.  She loves to draw, by hand and digitally on the computer.  There are drawings all over my house.  We have talked about only keeping the ones she loves the most and keeping them CONTAINED.  ha ha  So I gave her an old 3-ring binder to store them, and she has carried this thing around for months.  It was looking pretty gross by this point in time, and I couldn’t stand it anymore.   This is my before shot:

(that is so disgusting I’m embarrassed to show you guys but you have to see the before to appreciate the after!)

 I decided to cover it with some scrapbooking paper and make it prettier.  I used some cool paper I got somewhere….I can’t remember where but it was like 5-6 sheets together in a pack with black/pink/skulls theme, very girlie.  My daughter doesn’t like pink so I chose the sheet of paper with the least amount of pink on it.  I applied that with Mod Podge.  Then I used my big Making Memories stamps and some white acrylic paint from Hobby Lobby to stamp the word ART on it.  I had never tried it before, but I applied some embossing powder on the painted letters and heated it up to see what would happen.  It kind of cooked the paint a bit and didn’t do what it would normally do with embossing powder, but now the letters are sparkly so it’s okay.  Here’s the AFTER shot:

(click to see larger)

So what do you guys think?  Cool?  I love it and so does Summer (whew!).

Using Glossy Accents.

I love this stuff.  It’s easy to apply, and it dries clear and hard and shiny and makes things prettier!

I recently worked on my daughter’s first grade schoolwork scrapbook and made my own embellishment of an apple.  I started out with a bare chipboard apple from Maya Road (I think).  Here’s the before shot:

I used some red ink to change the color of it.  That took a couple of coats of my ink pad.  I just colored the stem with a brown marker.

 Then I applied the Glossy Accents to make it shiny.  Check it out!

It’s so quick and easy!  Another thing I like to use it for is to apply it to a sticker and it turns it into an epoxy sticker, raised up a bit and shiny.   Do any of you use this for projects, and if so what for?

Kitchen Cabinet Redo!

I recently was asked to guest blog over at The CSI Project about my kitchen cabinet makeover and I was so excited! Now that all the readers over there have read my how-to, I can share it here with you also.  I’ve been wanting to do this for sooo long but just couldn’t afford it.  I was sponsored by Dutch Boy so it ended up costing me very little.  I had to buy foam rollers and the primer and that’s it!  Woo hoo!   And I already love Dutch Boy paint and have been using it for many years, so I was thrilled!

Let me tell you, living and trying to cook in your kitchen for a month while you redo the cabinets is NO fun! I work full time so this was done in my spare time in the evenings and on weekends. Man, I am SO HAPPY to be finished! Well, the cabinets are finished. Not the entire kitchen (boo!). Anyway, here’s what it looked like before. (I’ll preface this by saying I have a VERY small kitchen and not so great lighting, so it’s really really hard to take photos in here! Forgive me if they’re not wonderful!)

Before:

I must say, and this is just MY opinion of course, I think the worst kind of paint you could possibly use on your kitchen cabinets (or anything really!) is flat paint. And that is exactly what the previous owners did with the cabinets in this kitchen. I hate flat paint because it’s impossible to keep clean. These were just plain ole gross.

I love white cabinets. I just like the clean, crisp feel of white. And I like high gloss paint. Shiny equals pretty! I’ve been putting off this redo for quite some time due to budget issues (the budget being nonexistent mostly! LOL), I was thrilled to be sponsored by Dutch Boy for this project! Here’s the paint I chose.

I went with this choice because it’s specifically for cabinets and the girl working in the paint department at Menard’s told me it was the highest gloss I could get. This was the first time I’ve painted in a while, so I was pleasantly surprised by the paint container having a built in spout like this.

Very convenient! And I loved the fact that it came with a handle on the side like a gallon of milk!

So here’s how it all went down:

Step One: I removed all the doors from the cabinets, then removed the handles and hinges from the doors and drawers. The handles got scrubbed with soap and water. But those hinges were a different story. Look at this!

I counted 4 layers of paint on the cabinets, and that included the hinges. I soaked them with my magical paint remover.

This stuff is AMAZING! But you have to be really careful because just a tiny drop splashed onto your arm will burn like nobody’s business. Don’t ask me how I know.

See how pretty? There are 22 hinges and at $2 each at my local Menard’s, I saved a little bit of money by just cleaning up the old ones and they look like new again!

Step Two: Remove all the paint from the doors and drawers. Now, my magical 1776 would have done a wonderful job on this part also, but it wasn’t needed. I was able to chip all the paint off in huge pieces with a sharp putty knife and one of those razor blade scrapers you use to get paint off glass.

Step Three: Sand, sand, and sand some more! This was the WORST part for me. I borrowed my dad’s Duwalt square sander and it worked great. In fact, it’s going on my Christmas list this year. But the sanding was neverending. I had to keep stopping for breaks because my hands were numb. LOL

Step Four: Primer everything! Perhaps now would be a good time to clarify that I’m not a professional painter. I have read many how-tos on the internet and blogs on how other people have done their cabinets and I used some tips I’ve gleaned from that. One of them was the best primer to use, and I got this primer because of several others saying it was the best.

I thought it worked great. I put two coats on all the cabinet doors, drawers, and the base of the cabinets. I also primered all the insides of the cabinets. I used a paintbrush for corners and a foam roller for the rest of the job. I had read it’s a good idea to lightly sand in between coats of primer, so that’s what I did. I learned that you shouldn’t put primer on too thick, because in your 85 degree kitchen it will run and there will be drips. UGH!

Step Five: Paint! Ah, FINALLY! I once again went with a paintbrush for the corners and edges and a nice foam roller for the rest, the bases, the doors, the drawers, all of it! I put two coats of paint on everything. Oh, it was so shiny and clean and pretty, this was when I finally started to see the light at the end of my month-long tunnel! For my doors, I actually waited a full 24 hours in between paint coats. I know some people just wait a few hours, but I didn’t want any mishaps! Here’s a funny story for you. At the end of one day I still had quite a bit of paint left in my roller tray, so rather than pour it back into the container I just covered it up with aluminum foil and left it on the kitchen counter. Like this:

My hubby came home shortly after and asked me what kind of cake we had and who made it. I looked at him like he was crazy. What? What cake? He said there’s a cake on the counter in the kitchen. And I was still looking at him like he was crazy, having no idea what he was talking about…..until he finally said the cake wrapped up in aluminum foil! He thought the paint was a cake. And I could see why he thought so, it’s roughly the size of a 9×13 cake pan! LOL

Step Six: Wait. I am not a patient woman! This was very hard for me, but from past experience I knew if I handled the painted pieces too soon they would get flawed and I really wanted to do this project right the first time, so I waited.

Step Seven: Put all the freshly cleaned (now silver!) hinges and handles back onto the doors and drawers. Hang all the doors back up. Actually, ask your husband to hang all the doors back up because you feel like your arms are gonna fall off by this point.

Step Eight: Step back and enjoy the beauty! (ignore the unpainted windowill…I ran out of time!) I cannot even tell you how happy looking at this kitchen makes me! Even with my ugly green countertop! LOL This was really just a small part of my kitchen redo. I’m planning to buy a white countertop soon and come up with some sort of awesomeness for the backsplash. And that 80-year-old wallpaper is going bye-bye. In fact, the part of the kitchen that you don’t see is already free of wallpaper. I’m also going to replace that hideous fluorescent light above my kitchen sink (hate it) with something pretty that hangs down a bit. And that awful green tile on my walls? It will be red someday soon!

Thanks to CSI for asking me to guest post….and I hope you all enjoyed my kitchen cabinets makeover as much as I’m enjoying looking at them!

Check me out!

I’m the guest blogger over at the CSI Project blog!  I repainted my kitchen cabinets and wrote about it for their kitchen makeover series.  Please come on over and check me out right here and let me know what you think!

Birthday cake banner.

(yes, I took the photo inside the fridge!  It was melting!)

I just wanted to show you something I whipped up super quick for my dad’s birthday last week.  We got him an ice cream cake because that is quick and easy (no baking! no cleanup!) and then I made this banner to string across it.  I’ve seen lots of different ones out there in internet land and think they’re so cute.

For this one, I just hand cut those triangles myself using the first one I cut as a template for the others.  Then I used some old EK Success letter stickers to spell out my phrase.  Then I just used Glue Dots to stick them onto some white ribbon and tied that to my sticks.

(click to see larger)

Can you see it?  I lovingly call my dad that all the time! ha ha

Custom Wedding Card Box.

I recently was hired to customize a card box for a wedding reception, to hold cards that people give instead of gifts, you know?  The lady gave me a plain box that she had bought from somewhere made by Wilton and asked me to do it in the wedding colors, light yellow and navy blue.  I had an invitation to use as a reference.  This was a job!  Harder than I thought it would be.  The box was really just kind of a piece of junk (sorry Wilton!).  It didn’t assemble very well, and there were gaps or bulges that I didn’t like, but it wasn’t my fault so I tried to work with it.

Here’s the box before:

I began with covering all the sides and lid with this lovely My Minds Eye patterned paper from their Stella Rose line.  I had no yellow papers in my supply so I had to go buy it for this project at Creek Bank Creations.

Isn’t that a pretty, elegant paper for a wedding project?

The invitation was yellow and had areas of navy blue with polka dots, so I found this navy blue polka dotted ribbon (also at Creek Bank Creations), and used my yellow Copic marker to color all the white polka dots yellow!  Check it out!

Then I got to work on the prettiest part….the flowers!  I used navy blue cardstock and yellow cardstock for some of them and the same My Minds Eye paper for the large one in the middle.  I made them all myself (first time doing that!).  The smaller ones were made using the My Favorite Things “rolled flower” Die-Namics die, cutting them out with the Cuttlebug and then rolling them up…. and the larger flowers were made by just drawing a huge spiral on the opposite side of my patterned paper and cutting out and rolling up.  I have seen lots of great tutorials for how to make these on the internet.

At the last minute I decided to add a whimsical little touch with the bride and groom (wooden cut outs from Michaels).  I knew these kids getting married are in college and fun-loving and were even having breakfast as their reception dinner….so I thought a cute little something would be appropriate for them.

And there you have it!

Brave Girls truth book

I’ve been working on the Soul Restoration class with Brave Girls and this is the first page of my Truth book.  Hmmm…did I show you the cover of that book?  I will have to look and see because I don’t remember.  (That disease is called Mommy Brain and I’ve had it for 11 years!)

Click the photo to see the page larger.  I inked up the edges, cut the pretty round design from BoBunny paper and added jewels to bling it up a bit.  I like sparkle.

Any of you readers out there taking the Soul Restoration class?  I just finished it and a new one started again this week.  I have really liked the class and will be taking Soul Restoration 2 one of these days.  It really changes your perspective about yourself (and your self worth) and I would recommend it to anyone.